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The centrepiece of this volume is Loewald's paper 'On the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis', first presented in 1957 but not published until 1960. Fogel regards this article as Loewald's nuclear paper, in which are found, either explicitly or implicitly, the principles which Loewald subsequently elaborated and refined in his later work. At Loewald's request, two of his later papers, 'Superego and time' (1962) and 'Psychoanalysis as an art and the fantasy character of the psychoanalytic situation' (1975), are also included.
After a brief prefatory chapter by the editor, the reader encounters or, as will be the case for many, re-encounters 'On the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis'. Loewald's purpose, simply stated and subsequently both elegantly and poetically elaborated, is 'to attempt to correlate our understanding of the significance of object relations for the formation and development of the psychic apparatus with the dynamics of the therapeutic process' (p. 16). He proceeds to propose that libidinal tension between a more primitively and a more maturely organised psychic apparatus is crucial for psychic development. Loewald utilises early mother/child interactions as the prototype for the therapeutic action in psychoanalysis, with the analyst/mother now functioning as the representative and mediator of a higher level of organisation to the analysand/child.
In developing his thesis, Loewald challenges the view of the psychic apparatus as a closed system. Initially, he focuses on the conception of the analyst as a detached scientific observer, a mirror upon which the analysand's unconscious is reflected, proposing instead that the analyst functions as 'a co-actor on the analytic stage' (p. 18), a participant in a new object-relationship in which both analysand and analyst undergo successive periods of psychic disorganisation (ego regression) and reorganisation (new consolidation). Whereas a mirror, in the traditional